Colour palettes are ranges of pleasing colour combinations taken from a image used as inspiration. I started mine just as an exercise in looking at colour and for use in my textile designs. They are inspired by photographs I take during my travels, around the county, country and the world. It’s an enjoyable exercise and I have built up quite a portfolio of colour!

Many of you will build up a sketchbook collection of your drawing; not necessarily complete, but lines, shapes, textures, etc. Looking at colours in images and building a digital sketchbook or catalogue can be just as useful even before you take the paper and paint in your hand. It’s amazing what unusual colour combinations can be found that move you away from those “safe” schemes we are often lead to.

I don’t need to tell you how to use Photoshop or any of the other photo manipulation packages, but here’s how I approach my palettes:

1. Find an image you really like – for me it’s usually colour that grabs me first, surprise, surprise!  I’m afraid I can’t do “neutrals”, as hard as I try, colour always creeps in.  Flowers – wild or cultivated; the countryside – Derbyshire, British or more exotic locations all appeal in quite a soulful, intuitive way.  Urban landscapes are a good source of shapes for weavers and will often throw up interesting colour combinations, as in the “London Colours” palette.  Having said I find neutrals hard, this image illustrates how colour within a fairly neutral palette changes the dynamic making it much more “friendly” to me!
2. Crop your image if necessary. Fussy, overly big images can be too distracting, so focus on the area that really appeals.
3. Copy and paste your image onto an A6 white background.
4. Decide how many colours you want in your palette, an odd number is more pleasing than an even one.
5. Decide what shape you want your palette to take.  I like oblongs as they are more suited to my woven fabrics, but circles or squares are all acceptable. If your image is large and you only have a small border at the side or bottom, then the smaller, circles or squares are a better bet.
6. Create your shapes and select the most prominent colours using the colour picker tool. Drop the colours into your chosen shapes using the bucket tool. Sometimes the colour combinations work immediately, sometimes you need to change odd ones and shuffle the order of the shapes for them to work in a pleasing way. That’s for you to try out yourself, but just as you’d keep sketching a particular shape in your sketchbook then you keep shuffling or changing the colours in your palette.

It can be quite frustrating trying to select the correct colour that your eye sees as the colour picker tool selects only one pixel at a time; your eye sees a group of pixels that make up the colour. The “Bungle Bungle Colour” palette illustrates this phenomenon, there is quite a lot of purple in the rocks, but it was almost impossible to select the right colour. This is where paint and paper come into their own – attempting to mix the colour, in any medium, helps you to become more familiar with that colour, making it easier to use with the other colours, especially if you’ve tried to mix those too.

Having built up a collection of palettes, you now have a library of colour combinations that can be used in a variety of situations. These become your own ranges to offer clients, rather than using “off the peg” colour templates or swatches.

Award winning textile designer, Alison Yule, creates luxury hand woven fabrics that fuse contemporary design with traditional fibres and techniques and targets both the domestic and corporate markets. She specialises in unique products that are individually designed and hand woven for each client and can include wall panels, rugs, cushions, throws and window hangings.

Visit Alison’s website at alisonyuletextiles.co.uk and then follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Stock image libraries are strange places for graphic designers. The rise of cheap, affordable image libraries in recent years could be seen by some as a God send. However I don’t see it that way. I see them as a kind of Hell, Purgatory if you like. A place where a once creative individual can spend hours locked in a world of annoyingly over smiley, slim, attractive American models with perfect teeth. Not that I have anything against attractive American models with perfect teeth, it’s just they don’t always look like they belong. Like Lady GaGa at a W.I. meeting. I’ve lost many hours of my life trawling through these websites trying to find something usable. Hours that I can never get back, and it was killing my creativity.

Have you ever been given a design brief and found the first thing you did was type words into a stock site to see what came up? To my shame, I have. That’s what these sites do to you, they whisper in your ear and tell you there is a stock image for everything. You can have your cake and eat it, all for $5.

A while ago it hit me. I was fed up with being a graphic designer. I hated that my job had become so predictable as it was unpredictability that had attracted me to design in the first place. As a kid growing up I loved art, but when I was deciding what career path to follow I came to the conclusion that artists only became famous and made money after they’d died. I mean no disrespect to artists, but in the words of Brian Clough, “Don’t send me flowers when I’m dead. If you like me, send them while I’m alive.” So I chose the world of commercial graphic design.

It occurred to me that I’d been neglecting the very skills that had brought me to where I was. I can hold a pencil, I can draw, I can paint. I like to create something new, something unique, something artistic. Why was I wasting hours of my life sifting through endless pages of search results? I could be spending my time coming up with a truly creative solution. And with that thought, with the decision to pick up the arts that I loved, I rediscovered my passion for design and my inspiration to do something new.

If you browse our website, I’m sure you’ll be able to spot a few stock images in some of our work. Unfortunately in some cases, stock images are a necessary evil. I’d much rather come up with an illustration or commission a photographer, and where I can, I do. Sometimes though, it’s just not practical, it’s unavoidable. When a client asks me to “just find a stock image to go there,” I now tell them that every time I have to search for a stock image, a part of my soul dies! On a tangent, if there are any photographers out there reading this, my advice to you (free of charge)… Get together a large group of people made up of multiple ethnic groups, all ages and both sexes. That image will make you a small fortune! My advice to my fellow designers though, see royalty free stock image websites for what they truly are… a last resort.

Andy Cogdon
Cogdon, Clark & Tranter

Wayne Hemingway – Host of CIN Awards 2010.

Winner of Best in Show – 1623 Theatre (above)

Judges comments: “They were highly impressed with the company’s innovative approach to taking a well known subject and placing it into a contemporary context. The work has been seen at the National Theatre in London and is proving to be a viable business model. They truly embody the creative spirit at large in Derby and Derbyshire.”

Winner of Best Creative Team - Subism (above)

Judges comments: “Very high standard with lots of examples of individuals achieving success in the face of adversity. There were high levels of innovation demonstrable throughout. The winner met all the criteria to a very high level. They have grown significantly nationally and internationally, working with Derby businesses and individuals in the process.”

Shortlisted: Katapult, Origination, Subism and QUAD

Winner of Architecture – Evans Vettori Architects (above)

Judges comments: “The winner demonstrated high design quality standard within a complex set of constraint. Good project management made this entry stand out.” Sea House – Examplar eco-house located in Portloe, Cornwall.

Shortlisted: Pick Everard, Simon Foote Architects & Evans Vettori Architects

Winner of Best Digital Campaign – Katapult (above)

Judges comments: “The winner made the client think differently about digital media. There was an innovative use of technology which featured good use of user generated content. Longevity is inbuilt into this project.” MobFormat – creation of a social media space from around the world to submit their work for Format International Photography Festival.

Shortlisted: Fabulousplaces.co.uk, Strawdog Studios & Katapult

Winner of Best Photographer & Film – Tristan Poyser (above)

Judges comments: “The winner most comprehensively met the entry criteria and demonstrated this clearly. The word added value and innovated new services and demonstrated clearly how creativity can hel business success” Photographic partner for Smith of Derby.

Shortlisted: K-Motion, Tristan Poyser & Smith & Smith

Winner of Best Marketing Campaign – Fluid Ideas (above)

Judges comments: “The winner’s work was the stand out entrant. The work was memorable, demonstrating a great application of creativity. The work was innovative, engaging and well thought through.”

Shortlisted: Origination, Fluid Ideas, Katapult & Moggs

Winner of Best Graphic Design/Illustration – Firecatcher (above)

Judges comments: “This was a strong category and a difficult choice. The winner demonstrated creativity in an unexpected place in ways that makes a different to people and reaches a wide audience.” Mural Design for Royal Derby Hospital.

Shortlisted: Design & i, Firecatcher, Katapult & Moggs

Winner of Best Music, Performance or Live Event – 1623 Theatre (above)

Judges comments: “A really really strong category, almost all entrants challenged convention. The judges felt that the winner showed a great combination of art and commerce working so strongly together.” Emergency Shakespeare Project.

Short listed: Charity Shop DJ, Derby Festé, 1623 Theatre & Subism

Photography by Graham Lucas Commons

Apple Tablet

With the new year coming along I can only see one thing that is going to change everything. That’s the Apple Slate. Suddenly you can sit on your sofa, floating around the web watching video reading text in ways which feel less like sitting at a computer and more like reading a magazine. Done right the technology has the ability to enable creativity to become even more accessible. Better keep an eye on this thing.

Keith Jeffrey

Director, QUAD

Keith Jeffrey

Keith Jeffrey